On Craft and Art: Some Thoughts on Repatriation and Collecting Policy—The Case of Collections at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo

Abstract

The issue of repatriation is of increasing concern in the museum world. For many central museums it has become part of their policy-making agenda. Diverse features of intangible heritage, such as research-based knowledge and recordings as well as various photographic materials, supplement in our time what appropriately could be repatriated by way of sharing. Many indigenous cultures from which objects were collected at one time have now established their own museums, or museum-like institutions, as for example Heritage Centers. Besides the positive aspects of sharing, an additional motivation for repatriation is that a specific collection, or part thereof, may attain a better and more adequate permanent localization than the original one, both in terms of future research and of presentation through exhibitions. Referring to craft and art I will elucidate this general assertion with three ethnic cases, the Netsilik, the Sàmi, and the Hopi, based on collections at the Museum of Cultural History.